by Simon Mayo
Now, they knew they had lost time. At the top of the square, they hesitated. The heavy wood-panelled gates were ajar, as Elizabeth Shortland had said they would be, the gap just large enough to see the alarm bell beyond and the arch it sat on.
‘The bell is dead ahead,’ said Habs. ‘Thirty yards.’
‘Habs, what are we doing?’ asked Joe, tucked in tight behind him. ‘What is this?’
‘This is probably better than my strychnine or your knife,’ said Habs, and sprinted for the alarm bell. Joe followed and, under its arch, they paused again, eyes everywhere, the crushing tiredness of the day forgotten.
‘One soldier now and we’re dead,’ said Joe.
‘Jus’ like the rest o’ the prison, then,’ said Habs. ‘She said to turn right.’
They looked across the gravelled courtyard. The Parcere subjectis arch, gates firmly bolted, was ahead of them; the Agent’s house to the left, lights ablaze; Magrath’s to the right, in darkness. Two plain slate buildings faced the physician’s house, and from one of them came raised voices. Joe held tightly to Habs’s arm.
‘It’s her! She’s shouting at someone,’ he said.
‘She’s keepin’ ’em busy,’ whispered Habs. ‘Look, the courtyard is empty. If they’re not out here killin’ Americans, they’re in there bein’ shouted at by Mrs Shortland. She’s quite somethin’ …’
Magrath’s house had five first-floor windows and four on the ground, all with curtains drawn. A small porch marked a back door.
‘Do we jus’ let ourselves in?’ Habs’s heart was thumping in his ribs. There was a sudden quiet – the haranguing had stopped. ‘Too late.’
The slate house door opened, and five workmen trudged out. They walked in a diagonal towards the Agent’s house. In fifty yards, they would be in Joe and Habs’s eyeline; another eighty, and they would be inside.
‘Soon as they shut that door, we go,’ muttered Joe.
The first of the workmen came into view, a cook maybe, then two in heavy aprons, a man in a dark suit and, heart-stoppingly, a soldier, his musket held in front of him. Joe and Habs barely breathed. They prayed. They listened.
‘I reckon her ’ead’s been turned by all that shooting,’ said a voice.
‘She sounded bloody terrified, if you ask me,’ said another.
‘Don’t see why she takes it out on us, though.’
Joe had a sudden recollection of his words to Roche, many months ago: ‘That’s Devonshire talk, that is.’
The first workman pulled the Agent’s back door open, and the yard brightened.
‘Ready?’ whispered Habs.
‘Ready,’ confirmed Joe.
Four of the men were inside. Joe and Habs readied themselves for the final sprint. The Agent’s door closed. The yard darkened.
‘Shit.’
The soldier had become a sentry. He stood with his back to the door, staring out into the gloom, the silhouette of his readied musket clear to all.
‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’
A voice from across the courtyard, from the steps of the slate house. Elizabeth Shortland: imperious, commanding, brooking no argument. ‘At ease, Soldier. No need for a sentry, I’m sure. Thank you, we’ll be fine now.’
Joe and Habs saw the soldier glance around, adjust the angle of his gun. ‘With respect, ma’am—’ he called back.
‘With respect,’ Elizabeth bellowed, ‘you’ll go inside, lock the doors and protect the Agent’s affairs. Now!’
The soldier shrugged, disappeared inside.
Joe reached the door handle first and the door flew open. They both tumbled inside, Habs kicking the door shut behind them.
Crouched low on the physician’s floor, they froze, keening for sounds from the courtyard. Joe and Habs were still hunkered down when Elizabeth entered. She clicked the door shut, turned the lock and lit the nearest lamp. ‘Quick, up,’ she said.
Joe and Habs scrambled to their feet.
‘We have only seconds,’ she said. ‘Where will you go? Your grandmother’s?’
Joe, dumbfounded, spluttered, trying to find a reply. He didn’t know what to say, hadn’t thought that far. She was already moving them to the front of the house.
‘Put as many miles between you and this place as you can. After today, they might not notice you’re missing for a while. Here, take these.’ She threw two of Magrath’s coats at them; hats, too. ‘Wait,’ she said, disappearing briefly, before returning with bread, cheeses and some coins. ‘In your pockets. And you’ll need bandages to dress your wounds.’ She handed him a roll from her bag.
They were in the hall now, the huge front door at their backs.
‘The other side of this door is Dartmoor. It is a hateful, godforsaken place, as you well know, but it’s better than being hunted like rats in here. Today was a scandal, a disgrace. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have thought my countrymen capable of such barbarism. I am only sorry so many of your comrades have suffered. Go now.’ She moved to open the door, but Joe put up his hand.
‘Wait one second. Do you know how many have died? If we’re leaving, then we should know at least what happened to our friends.’
‘But I cannot tell you,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I only saw the square, I never went beyond. Mr Haywood and Mr Jackson, you know about; others have passed also. Mainly, I tended the wounded …’ She broke off.
‘Why are you doin’ all this?’ asked Habs. ‘We’re grateful, o’ course, but why you helpin’ us?’
‘I tolerated it for too long, Mr Snow.’ She pointed right, to her house. ‘I tolerated him for too long. I know it’s just a gesture – what good is helping two prisoners when there are seven thousand desperate for home? But.’ She smiled now. ‘But when I took your knife away, all this, it seemed obvious to me.’ She tucked some of Joe’s loose hair behind his ear, then wiped some blood from Habs’s face with her thumb. ‘And I saw your show. I will never forget it.’
There was a moment of silence between the three prisoners.
‘And besides, in the morning, I’ll be gone, too. Let me deal with the guards at the front. Give me thirty seconds. God speed.’
She unbolted Magrath’s door and slipped away without another glance. The smell of the moor rolled into the hall, moist, peaty and sweet with gorse. Both men inhaled deeply.
‘I declare my head is spinnin’ and my arm is throbbin’,’ whispered Habs.
‘Mine, too,’ said Joe. ‘I can’t quite believe any of it. What if they see us run?’
‘I think you know what happens.’
They listened to Mrs Shortland’s footsteps: steady, confident.
‘Here’s to the men of Four and all the good men of Dartmoor,’ whispered Joe. ‘The crews of the Eagle and the Bentham. To Sam. All our cast. I wish we could all go.’
‘Amen to that. And long live the King.’
They heard the guards salute the Agent’s wife.
‘So where’ll we go?’ asked Habs. ‘Now we’re all dressed like gentlemen? London? Dublin? They can’t be far.’
‘Sure,’ said Joe. ‘They’re just over the moor. We could be there before sunrise.’ He moved closer to the door.
‘And Suffolk’s close too, right?’
‘Yes. And you’ll blend in just fine.’
‘So there’s more coloured men like me there?’
‘Everywhere you look.’
‘Thought as much.’
They could hear the gate guards talking now.
‘Ready?’ said Habs.
‘Ready,’ said Joe.
Elizabeth’s voice, as fast and loud as a force nine, came at them hard, and they slipped from the house, on to the moor.
5.35
The Agent’s Study
Shortland is slumped at his desk. King Dick is sitting painfully in an upright chair, staring off into the distance. Neither has spoken; they have sat in silence for many minutes. Eventually, Shortland moves some papers.
SHORTLAND: Well, then. I hope you don’t
mind coming back here, it’s been a … (clears his throat) it’s been a bad time. (The King looks at Shortland but says nothing.) You have probably heard there is to be an inquiry. Rear Admiral Sir Josias Rowley and Captain Schomberg from HMS York are on their way to, er, investigate the matter. I am sure they will wish to speak to you.
KING DICK: Really. And what would be the point of that?
SHORTLAND: The truth, Mr Crafus, the truth. We all need the facts.
KING DICK: You mean your facts. You mean white facts. British facts. And in this tale of woe, they most likely ain’t gonna be the same as black facts, or even American facts.
SHORTLAND (flabbergasted): No, sir, they are the same. Facts are facts. We must agree on this, or all is lost.
KING DICK: All is already lost, Captain Shortland. If you don’t see that, you don’t see nothin’. But tell me your facts, anyways. I’ll see how you do.
SHORTLAND (unnerved): Well, let me see now. (Finds the right papers.) Nine men died as a result of the … melancholy occurrence of April sixth, and thirty-seven were injured. I have the names here, if you wish—
KING DICK (waving his hand): I know these names. And the men you buried secretly to keep them figures low?
SHORTLAND: That didn’t happen.
KING DICK: Sixty-three dead, Captain Shortland.
SHORTLAND: That isn’t true.
KING DICK: And the wounded men who hid in their own prisons, too scared to come out? How many o’ them never made it out again?
SHORTLAND: I don’t know the answer to that, I’m afraid. That is why there will be an inquiry. They will look at the facts, then deliver their verdict.
KING DICK: Justifiable homicide.
SHORTLAND: I’m sorry?
KING DICK: S’already the verdict. Your coroner and his jury of farmers have said so. ‘Justifiable homicide,’ they said.
SHORTLAND (shaking his head): No, that was the inquest. So that the burials could take place.
KING DICK (his eyes closed, his voice quieter): The burials. The burials of our friends, our shipmates, our comrades. The burials you conducted without us.
SHORTLAND: It is the way of things. It is the custom.
KING DICK (eyes open, angry): Yes, it is. It is ‘the way of things’ that killed my people! It is ‘the way of things’ that put us in Four in the first place! It is ‘the way of things’ that makes you think you can keep prisoners-of-war, when there is no war.
SHORTLAND: As you know, your government’s ships will be here in the next few days …
KING DICK: And when I get home, it will be ‘the way of things’ that keeps people like me separate. The way you liked it here. The way they like it there. We might be free, we might be enslaved, but we’ll still be separate. It seems neater that way.
There is another silence between them, Shortland lost in thought, the King waiting for him.
SHORTLAND: Your Romeo and Juliet was first class, I thought. (He waits for a reaction but, when there is none, continues.) I have had cause to think deeply on it these last days. We never saw the last few scenes, of course. So I have read the last pages myself. I found it … uncomfortable reading, Mr Crafus, I don’t mind telling you.
KING DICK: Because?
SHORTLAND: You know full well. The family heads, Montague and Capulet, they mourn their loss. They realize what they had amongst them but, by then, it is too late. Proud men, both of them, but blind. And it is their neglect that allows the tragedy to unfold as it does.
KING DICK: That is one reading of it …
SHORTLAND: That is my reading of it. (Another pause.)
KING DICK: Has Mrs Shortland returned?
SHORTLAND (sadly): I’ll not speak of it.
KING DICK (nods): And the search for Mr Snow and Mr Hill?
SHORTLAND: I called it off. God knows where they got to and, frankly, they are someone else’s problem now. I have enough of my own. (He gathers his papers.) Where will you go, Mr Crafus? When you’re back in America, what will you do?
KING DICK (standing slowly from the chair): Are you a Christian man, Captain Shortland?
SHORTLAND (taken aback): I used to think so. Church of England, but … Why …
KING DICK: Do you believe in heaven?
SHORTLAND: Now I think of it, between us, no, I don’t think I do.
KING DICK: We built your village church to a god you don’t believe in?
SHORTLAND (shrugs): It would appear so.
KING DICK: So you don’t think I’ll see Mr Jackson and Mr Haywood again?
SHORTLAND (reluctantly): No, I don’t think you will. I’m sorry …
KING DICK: I jus’ been singin’. We had our own service, seein’ as you didn’t let us bury our own. So we sang. It was a comfort.
SHORTLAND: I’m sure it was.
KING DICK (eyes shut, sings softly):
Farewell, dear friends, again farewell;
Soon we shall rise to thee,
On wings of love our stars will cross,
Through all eternity.
The King nods at Shortland, then walks from the room.
‘Did the world ever hear of an act like this before? In the houses of America belonging to any of the friends, acquaintances or relations of these men and innumerable other houses, their names and their story are pasted on the walls, written in blood; and in the American almanacks is recorded the anniversary of the massacre of Dartmoor.’
William Cobbett, History of the Regency and Reign of King George the Fourth, 1830–34
The Dartmoor Massacre
6 April 1815
Details of casualties from the report by Dr G. Magrath
The Nine Deaths
John Haywood, a black man from Virginia. Prison number 3154. Musket ball, neck injury.
Thomas Jackson, from New York. A boy aged fourteen. Prison number 6520. Musket ball, left side of belly.
John Washington, from Maryland. Prison number 3936. Musket ball, left temple.
James Mann, Boston. Prison number 970. Musket ball, right pectoral muscle, passed through right and left lobes of lungs.
Joseph Toker Johnson, from Connecticut. Prison number 1347. Musket ball to the heart and lungs.
William Laverage, from New York. Prison number 4884. Musket ball to second and third ribs, left lobe of lungs.
James Campbell, from New York. Prison number 2647. Musket ball to the right eye.
John Roberts. Prison number 486. Musket ball to thigh.
John Grey. Prison number 94. Musket ball to left arm, amputated.
Author’s note
‘Inspired by true events’ needs a little explanation. As a phrase stuck to the front of books and films, it can often arouse suspicion, even mistrust. And when the story concerns what for many (particularly in Britain) is such an unknown war, there are precious few recognizable landmarks to navigate by. You should be reassured that ‘not knowing about the War of 1812’ is quite normal, in fact it has a long pedigree. The nineteenth-century Canadian historian William Kingsford said, ‘The events of the War of 1812 have not been forgotten in England for they have never been known there.’
Even blunter was another Canadian, C. P. Stacey, who wrote that this was ‘an episode in history that makes everybody happy, because everybody interprets it differently … the English are happiest of all, because they don’t even know it happened.’
You see what I mean.
Only for Canadians has it retained much significance. The defence of their borders from invading Americans led the way, so the story has it, for the founding of their great nation. Even for Americans, despite both the burning of the White House by British troops and the writing of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ in 1814, it has become what Donald R. Hickey called ‘the forgotten conflict’, sitting as it does between the War of Independence and the convulsion of the Civil War.
Maybe this goes some way to explaining why the story of Dartmoor Prison has remained tucked away as one of history’s footnotes. And yet it represents the
only occasion that a prison in Great Britain has been segregated by race, the first (as far as I can see) all-black production of a Shakespeare play, and the first performances of black gospel music on British shores (many sailors later recorded their admiration for Block Four’s choir).
Perhaps we just weren’t looking; even though a thousand black sailors were living in Devon in 1814, perhaps we weren’t interested in their story. But now – thankfully – we see matters differently. As British–Nigerian historian David Olusoga says, black history is everyone’s history.
A word on King Dick. This is far from his dramatic debut. He has featured in five novels, one play and a film, the 1952 production Lydia Bailey, based on the best-selling book of the same name by Kenneth Roberts. Here Dick is played by William Marshall (in his first screen role) as a Plato-quoting, elegant Haitian revolutionary, confidant of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the husband of eight wives and father to a backyard full of children.
In The Legend Of Gentle Morgan by Paul Wheeler, Dick is at least in Dartmoor but this time in cahoots with the British. After escaping, he is convicted as a runaway slave and returned to a plantation. Senator John McCain in Thirteen Soldiers calls him ‘a natural autocrat’ and ‘an absolute monarch’. Some have even suggested that Dick was the inspiration behind James Clavell’s 1962 bestseller King Rat. However, the truth is that we know nothing about his life for certain until he is captured by the British from the US privateer Requin and arrives in Dartmoor in 1814. Other stories suggest he was on the USS Chesapeake or maybe a prisoner of conscience from the Royal Navy (like Tommy Jackson here). But his productions of Othello and Romeo and Juliet are fact, as are the reports of his casual violence and ‘business activities’. So, part-gangster, part-theatrical impresario, I wanted Richard Crafus to dominate the book as he dominated Block Four, even if he has, by its conclusion, become more King Lear than King Dick.
